Sean Butler is an attorney in private practice, primarily handling business disputes. He has had his own law office since 1992, in West Los Angeles. Currently, he is the President and Co-Chair of the International Criminal Court Alliance, a California non-profit corporation with the goal of educating about the need for the International Criminal Court, and its processes and procedures. This year, Sean Butler has been selected to chair the International Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He is also a member of the International Law Sections of the California State Bar and the American Bar Association as well as the American Society of International Law.

The primary reason every nation should support the ICC is that the ICC is the best method to hold individuals accountable for very serious crimes when no national court is willing or able to prosecute those individuals. In other words, it's a back-up for a failed judicial system.

With the experiences of the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda as a guide, by the time of the 1998 treaty conference, the ICC was designed to cover only those most serious of crimes against the international community: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I hope to convince each and every one of you that the Vietnam should support the ICC. At the end of the discussion, if anyone is still not convinced, I would like you to tell me why, so I can find out better how to address that particular concern.